(courtesy The Book People)
An initiative of The Book People, Love Your Bookshop Day was started as a means of “celebrat[ing] bookshops across the country and highlight[ing] what makes local bookshops great”.
This year’s theme, “Giving the gift of imagination”, celebrates “the crucial role bookshops play in inspiring our imagination” and it certainly fits with one of the key reasons why I love going to all the bookshops I frequent including my very dear favourites, Newtown, Sydney’s Better Read Than Dead and Dymocks Sydney’s city store.
But beyond the role they play in stoking imagination, which in turn plays a very real role in helping is thrive in life, there are three key reasons why I love heading to bookshops, and why you should, not just today but every day of the year you can possibly get to one.
(via Shutterstock)
They are my happy place
I have always loved bookshops. Some of my earliest memories involve saving up my pocket money, and heading to the bookshop to carefully select the next read or reads that would delight and enhance my days. I had a happy childhood as far as families go, but outside of that relatively safe environment, I was bullied and controlled by nasty school kids and some of the people at the church where my dad was a minister, and books, and bookshops gave me a powerful means of escape and solace. Even more, when I am stressed, and in my current job, that’s more often than not, I will head to a bookshop to feel better, lick my wounds and yes, buy more books even though my TBR is some 500 books strong. There’s something about being in a bookshop that just makes everything so much better and life far brighter and more delightful even when it’s patently not.
(via Shutterstock)
There’s so much possibility
Bookshops it will surprise one joy to learn are full to the brim with books. Great revelations! When I walk into any bookshop, but particularly one as big and grand as Dymocks Sydney, I feel like there’s no end to all the stories I could read and no finish to the wonderful narrative possibilities waiting for me. In a world that often feels a little too finite for my comfort, having that kind of expansiveness as your fingertips is an unalloyed joy and it makes every aisle you go down and shelf you peruse, the first step towards something quite magical and wonderful. Sure, there is an logical end to how many books can be in any one store, but when you’re in a bookshop, it doesn’t feel that at all and the world and everything in it and beyond it feels very much intoxicatingly and wonderfully yours.
(via Shutterstock)
Everybody knows my name?
Okay the staff at my favourite books, adorably lovely though they are, don’t usually remember my name unless I tell them (and that’s usually only in the context of accessing whichever loyalty program I’m in, which is all about my mobile number anyway). BUT, and here’s the important part – while they don’t know my name, they know I love books, especially given the quantities of them I buy, and it’s this shared bond that unites us and makes me feel part of a community. Yes, I I know they’re there to sell books, and I am there to buy them so you could cynically say it’s all very transactional, but it never ever feels like that. By and large book lovers work at bookshops and book lovers shop there and so when we meet, we feel like family and even if that’s a fleeting thing, it’s absolutely delightful while it lasts.